


'cause i worry about you the whole night

by screaminghalfpastmidnight



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is Trying, Dad!Dick Grayson, Family Fluff, Team as Family, dick and kory move the kids to gotham to live a domestic life, idk how to tag, mom!kory anders, set after season two but doesnt include a lot of characters for the plots sake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:14:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25505026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screaminghalfpastmidnight/pseuds/screaminghalfpastmidnight
Summary: when trigon came back, dick officially decided that he was so fucking done with being a vigilante.ORdick and kory and how they end up giving their kids the most normal life they can.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Garfield Logan, Dick Grayson & Koriand'r & Garfield Logan & Raven, Dick Grayson & Raven, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r
Comments: 15
Kudos: 96





	'cause i worry about you the whole night

**Author's Note:**

> never dove into titans before but i love this lil family so here we are!
> 
> title from "Safe Inside" by James Arthur

when trigon came back, dick officially decided that he was so fucking done with being a vigilante. they’d thought rachel had got rid of him the first time - banished him to another dimension, or something - then he pops back up in rachel’s dreams and instead of coming to him or kory or even telling gar, she leaves to deal with it herself and he spends literal _months_ searching for her. he supposes he can’t really blame her for bolting, especially since he’s bailed on her numerous times, but kory can, at least. the two of them split up, worried out of their minds until dick has a terrible, heartwrenching dream of Rachel _possessed_ and in pain and in fucking _missouri_ of all places. he takes kory and gar and they meet donna, dawn and hank at some abandoned house in the middle of nowhere and dick has to literally pull rachel out of a hallucination so fucked up, he’s sure he’d have nightmares about it if he were her. then trigon is literally disintegrated and rachel’s trapped tightly in between him and kory, gar joining in not long after and he thinks, _fuck this. we’re done._

they stay in a motel that night after seeing the rest of the titans off - he’s pissed as hell at donna, who apparently was the only one rachel had told where she was going, but he still hugs her, kissing her cheek and promising to call because really, if he were thinking logically, rachel put her trust in donna and it meant that she could check up on her while letting her do what she needed to do. it feels way too much like the early days when he barely knew these three and it almost sends him into a panic attack. he goes to the kids’ room to check on them, to make sure they’re alive and not in pain so that maybe it’ll calm him the fuck down and when he returns to his room, kory’s awake. he sighs when he sees her, dropping down onto the side of the bed, staring straight ahead. kory just waits, like he knew she would.

“i can’t go through this again.” he pauses and he knows she’s thinking the same thing. “she keeps _almost_ dying. and yeah, she’s fine now, but i’m not strong enough to keep on watching it. i don’t want to.”

kory sighs, shifting so that she’s sitting cross-legged beside him, a hand on his shoulder. “i don’t either but what can we do? she has these powers and they’re definitely not going away. we can’t ask them not to be titans.”

dick shakes his head. “maybe not while we’re doing it.” he feels her freeze beside him and turns his head so he’s looking at her, so she knows he means it. “i restarted the titans because i wanted to give them a home and a purpose and i wanted to know that no matter what, they could protect themselves on their own. but maybe their purpose should just be… being _kids_.”

kory lets out a breath, running a hand through her hair and scootching closer to him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “grayson… helping people, the _way_ that we do is pretty much in your blood. i mean, are you seriously suggesting we disband the titans, fuck off to canada and live in domesticity? is that not going to make you stir crazy?”

he thinks on it for a moment. he’d never envisioned himself in a family suburb with a picket fence and packed lunches stacked on the island counter next to overflowing backpacks and drawings stuck to the fridge door. but, until meeting rachel, and then gar not long after, he never envisioned dedicating his entire existence to protecting, loving and taking care of two fucked up teenagers with abilities that would invoke nightmares in people who were ten times more broken than him. after royally screwing up everything with dawn, falling in love was the farthest thing from his mind - not that he even thought he was capable of that anymore - but he did. hard and fast and almost perfectly, in fact. and oh, did he love kory. he loved the little family they’d created together and he’d do absolutely _anything_ to hide them all away in his heart so that no one could ever get to them.

“i want this.” he says in conviction. “i know that this is what’s best for us.” he notices her small smile when he says _us_ and leans forward to kiss her forehead. she nods after a moment, thumb stroking the bone in his shoulder. 

“i could live the simple life. we could send the kids to school… we could sleep in all the time.” she smirks, planting a kiss on his cheek with a loud smack before getting serious. “you’re right. this can’t happen again. they deserve as normal of a life as we can give them, so where are we gonna go? gotham?”

dick snorts, his body slumping against hers in exhaustion. “gotham’s a shithole.”

“that’s true.” kory smiles. “but you were raised there. it’s not far from chicago, which means donna’s just a call away. besides, i know bruce was a shit father but he’s not bad at the grandparent thing.”

she’s not wrong. bruce has been making more of an effort than dick can ever remember him doing and he’s tried his best with rachel and gar, who have both greeted him with open minds and hearts. it’d be sort of heartwarming to see if it wasn’t so fucking weird. but he doesn’t want to think about it tonight so he just kisses kory square on the lips and shifts them so that they’re lying down, wordlessly telling her he wants to go to sleep.

he wakes with his head in her lap and the tv on low volume to some action movie he’s never seen and kory’s hands carding through his hair, chewing on a granola bar. he stays there for a few minutes, letting himself enjoy the few moments of peace until kory tells him that she didn’t bother waking up the kids, knowing he’d want to do it. he loves her so much. when he reaches the kids’ room, gar’s sitting upright on the bed with his legs pulled tight to his chest, absently watching spongebob and rachel’s nowhere to be seen. 

“hey, kiddo. where’s rach?” he says, closing the door behind him.

“shower.” gar mumbles, eyes not leaving the tv. dick makes his way over to the bed, sitting beside the boy and putting an arm around his shoulders, asking if he’s alright. he takes a moment to think about it, then eventually shakes his head. dick pulls him closer, waiting for him to explain. “i knew.”

“knew what?” dick frowns softly.

“back when we first got to the tower, when kory was still with donna, rachel was getting these dreams and she’d wake up with cuts everywhere. kory told you about those, right?” he continues only once dick nods. “well, the day i found out was the same day jason was taken by deathstroke. everything just got so crazy and rach and i got in a fight, it all just went to shit. but when you told us the truth about jericho and she left with donna, i knew the real reason why. i knew she wasn’t pissed at you. she was gonna do what she just did. she thought she was turning evil and she was gonna figure out a way to stop it, or never come back if she couldn’t. but then she had that dream about you and came back and then left again to resurrect donna and i was still fucked up from camdus, so i forgot about it.”

dick nods along, trying not to tense up at the thought of those few months after donna died and rachel left. it took him a long time to walk gar back from the ledge after all that camdus had done to him and even to this day, he still has some major problems stemming from his time there. yet another thing on the list of fuck-ups dick’s made. “dick, when you told me she was gone, i knew immediately that it was the same thing she tried to do before. if we’d just talked about it, if i’d said something once she came back, none of this would’ve happened.”

dick shakes his head, resisting the urge to sigh. his boy has such a good heart, it honestly scares him. “no, gar. that’s not your job. that’s mine. and kory’s. hey, we knew about the dreams and the scars. we could’ve said something when she came back from themyscira, but we didn’t and that’s on us, not you.”

dick drags his thumb under gar’s right eye to wipe away a single tear and gar sniffs, shaking his head in annoyance. “i just figured that after all we’ve gone through, we would stop trying to do things alone. bad things happen when we’re not together.”

dick nods, moving his hand to the top of gar’s head, playing with his hair. “i know, honey. rach and i are gonna talk about that, i promise. i know you’re tired of this. i am, too. but kory and i have figured something out. something that’s gonna keep us all safe and together, for good this time.” gar nods, looking him in the eyes as if to say _i believe you_ and dick presses a kiss to his temple as the bathroom door opens, rachel coming out in the same clothes from yesterday, dragging a towel through her wet hair. while cleaner, she looks way too tired for a fourteen year old and the scar on her cheek makes his stomach churn.

“hey, honey.” he says, watching her barely keep her eyes open. “how do you feel?”

“shit.” she mumbles, and he doesn’t really expect much more from her. gar just turns his attention back to spongebob. 

“okay, well i’m gonna go bring us back some breakfast. we won’t be moving for today so you two can go back to sleep if you want. kory’s gonna be here.” he gets a nod from the both of them and moves to grab rachel’s hand as she plops down on the bed. she squeezes it once to tell him that she’s fine and he rubs his finger over her palm, hoping to offer her at least a bit of comfort amidst the cold air moving between her and gar right now. he kisses each of them on the head and then makes his way back to his and kory’s room, to see her no longer in his shirt, but in her clothes from the previous day. 

“how are they?” she asks, as she’s buttoning up her pants. dick sighs and she pouts, placing a hand on his cheek. “that bad?”

“well, gar feels guilty for not telling us what rachel was going through before she ran off and rachel, honestly looks fucking terrible. i’ve never seen her this exhausted before.” kory frowns sadly as he continues. “i’m gonna get some breakfast for them and make a few calls. i don’t want to be motel-hopping for a long time.”

kory lets out a breath. “yeah. god knows what that’ll bring up for them. i wouldn’t be surprised if the both of them have nightmares tonight.” he wouldn’t be either, and he’s not looking forward to the nail marks on his arms or his kids’ tears soaking his shirt. he gives kory a kiss before he goes and uses the car ride to the nearest diner to get in touch with bruce, who helps him arrange for their stuff to be moved from san francisco to gotham and keeps him on the phone while searching for a fit enough house for the four of them, that’s in a relatively okay area with a school nearby and a good security system (that he’s sure bruce will scrap anyway to implement his own, but dick doesn’t mind).

when he pulls up to the motel, he goes straight to the kids’ room, completely unsurprised to find them both tucked under kory’s arms, fast asleep. he smiles involuntarily at the sight and places the bags of food on the nightstand as kory says something about the talking sponge being surprisingly funny. they’re shaken awake rather easily and it’s over shitty waffles that they ask them how they feel about disbanding the titans and moving to gotham. gar’s on board a little too quickly and dick feels like an asshole because gar’s probably wanted to get as far away from the tower as possible since camdus, but that thought hadn’t even crossed his or kory’s minds. rachel just shrugs and says something like _whatever you think is best_ and dick thinks she probably feels like they’re uprooting their entire lives because she fucked off to fight her demon father herself, and while that’s a part of it, they really should’ve done this long before trigon showed his face again.

he and kory are woken up that night to rachel climbing in between them wordlessly and then gar’s tucked under dick’s arm in the morning, though he doesn’t exactly remember when he showed up, but they seem to have gotten through the night without any screaming, so dick will take what he can get. they’re on the road an hour later and he takes turns driving with kory so that they can both spend a decent amount of time watching over the kids in the backseat. their body language pretty much confirms that sometime between yesterday and now, they’ve aired out their issues and eventually, they fall asleep leaning against each other and dick lets out a breath of relief. he and kory have a mindless conversation back and forth for the duration of the drive and are both utterly exhausted by the time they actually reach the house, but bruce is waiting on the porch and actually _hugs_ him and dick thinks he understands the man so much better now, even though bruce definitely had no idea what he was doing for the years he raised him.

all they really have in the house are three beds and some essentials that bruce picked up, plus the few things they’d bought when they first showed up at the motel, so gar plays games on his phone while kory and dick have a serious conversation with rachel about communication and she finally tells them why she thought it best to leave them all behind to figure out the trigon situation for herself. (she thought she was destined to be evil. she knew from the dreams trigon was giving her that the girl she sees in the mirror is not actually herself, but her ‘evil’ sister who is the destroyer of worlds, whereas rachel is the saviour of them. she left to undergo the trials. she won by killing her sister, and then trigon almost killed her because he was pissed she won and foiled his plans. dick understands now.) they tuck her and gar into bed as if they’re kindergartners and get maybe three hours of sleep until the nightmares finally kick in. dick’s with rachel until the morning and kory’s in and out of gar’s room until four, when he finally decides to stop trying to go back to sleep.

it’s a rough start, but no one expected any less.

**\---**

gar agrees to school right away, raving about how excited he is to do actual assignments and try out for sports teams while rachel hides herself away in her bedroom for three days. it’s gar that eventually convinces her to give it a try and while the both of them have simultaneous panic attacks on the first day, rachel ends up liking it a lot more than gar does. gar enjoys lunch and easy classes where he can spread his social butterfly wings, and dick’s ashamed to say he’s surprised at how much rachel enjoys learning. she exceeds their expectations; constantly doing extra credit work and reading ahead in her shakespeare plays and classic novels. no one in the house can keep up with her constant quips about literary devices and war battles and which section of the constitution protects which rights. she hates religion, though. dick doesn’t think he’s ever heard rachel complain about something so superficial in all the time he’s known her until she arrives back home on her first day of second semester religion and dares him to ask her how her day was. gar isn’t home as much as he used to be, always going to games and parties and hanging out at skateparks and diners. his grades are doing well enough, so the only problem dick has with it is that he misses him. kory suggests family movie nights that she saw on some american tv show once and then rachel’s suggesting a hamlet reenactment and he has to drag gar back to the couch.

dick transfers to gcpd and while it’s not as thrilling as the old titans times, it’s enough to keep him busy and he actually doesn’t hate his coworkers. he has dinner with bruce and alfred sometimes when he gets off early and bruce feels more like a father than he ever did and dick’s surprised when he stays at wayne manor as late as he does. kory gets a job as a dental receptionist and then decides she hates it so she becomes a bartender instead and actually enjoys telling off sleazy guys and watching people who’ve had terrible weeks let loose a little. she drags him out for date night at least twice a week (he goes very willingly, actually) and the kids make comments about it being cute and he tries not to think about them when they’re at dinner or swinging their hands together on the boardwalk, but he knows kory’s thinking about them, too. there’s normally leftovers of whatever the kids made when they come home and a note that says _don’t be loud. thin walls_ that makes kory giggle and his cheeks flush but he sneaks into their rooms and kisses them goodnight before him and kory retire.

he doesn’t think about the domesticity of it all or the fact that he and kory are the legal guardians of two teenagers or how he’s never discussed his relationship status with kory and they just sort of… _are_. he doesn’t think about it.

they get new neighbours a few months in and kory brings them a home-cooked meal while he’s at work because she says she saw it in a movie once, then ends up absolutely adoring the young couple and he comes home to all three of them sitting on the porch of the grayson-anders house at five in the afternoon. lydia mentions something about seeing their _son_ skateboarding around the first day that they moved in and dick’s heart skips a beat as he sneaks a glance at kory, who just smiles and tells them all about the skidmarks on their hardwood floors in the exact tone he remembers his mother using and he thinks he’s got it bad. rachel and gar are more than polite when they return home from the party they were at and dick can’t remember when he started feeling pride in his chest at the simple thought of the two of them being kind and respectful when meeting new people, but he does and he half-hates it, half-doesn’t.

weeks go by and the new neighbours decide to have a barbecue and invite dick and kory (and the kids but they have the big homecoming game that night. kory begs them to take pictures.) and when allison asks them questions about rachel and gar and gotham and the house, they realize they need a backstory. they throw it together quickly and basically say that they found rachel after her parents were killed and gar after he was thrown out of an abusive household and adopted them together because they just felt a connection to the two of them and it’s as simple as that. they don’t ask about their relationship status or how he met kory and dick should be grateful that he’s not forced into some awkward explanation but there’s also a part of him that wants to finally tell it like it is and pretend he hasn’t been in love with kory for years under unspoken circumstances. he tells her later on when they’re on the couch waiting up for the kids to come home that he loves her and that he should say it more and she just laughs, kissing his lips and says, “you don’t have to tell me. i know. i love you and you love me and that’s just how it is.” she says it like it’s a simple fact of life; like the sky is blue and there are four seasons and they’re in love and have two angels for children and that’s just it.

the two angels arrive home a half hour later and dick’s got a bruised side from where rachel jumps on top of him and gar inserts himself between him and kory, resting his head beneath her chin and rachel’s curled up in dick’s lap like a cat and he understands what kory meant. it just _is_.

**\---**

the nightmares come and go in waves. when rachel’s flare back up one night, she tells him she can’t breathe and he leans his head against hers so they can do it together and he’s genuinely worried she’s gonna pass out from panic. he checks her over for cuts even though logically, the part of her that tried to kill her in her sleep is gone and then he rocks her back and forth like a baby, squeezing her just as tightly as she’s squeezing him. she doesn’t cry, her eyes don’t even water and that simple fact scares the fuck out of him, because she’s constantly seeing scary shit and he really doesn’t want her to just… get _used_ to it.

she tells him it was the trials again as he presses a kiss to her cheek, promising she’s gonna be okay and letting her lean against him until her eyes go droopy and she whispers ever so faintly, “thanks, dad.”

he tucks her in, kissing her forehead and tells her to sleep before making his way to the kitchen, leaning against the counter and nursing a glass of water to fend off a panic attack. it’s not long before kory pads into the kitchen in just his shirt and puts her hands on his shoulders to calm him and he mutters, “rach called me dad.” and she laughs as if she expected it.

“i guess now is a good time to tell you that gar called me _mom_ this morning. i was gonna tell you when you came home but then bruce called and then i was gonna tell you before bed but you started kissing me, so…” she gets nothing more than a deep breath from him and she frowns. “what’s up with you, grayson?”

he bites his lip, shaking his head as he tries to find the right way to word it. “i know that we’re their parents. like, logically i know that. i know that we’re a family and they’re our kids. but hearing her say it… it doesn’t make it real because this is the realest thing i’ve ever had but, i never thought i could do this. that’s why i tried to leave rachel with dawn and hank in the beginning. i thought i’d fuck it up and now she’s calling me _dad_ and i just… i really don’t want to fuck this up, kory.”

kory shakes her head, pulling herself up to sit on the counter and dragging him closer to her. “babe, we’ve already made the _worst_ mistakes that we possibly could. and they’re _still here_ . they still ask you for help with their homework and make it home every wednesday without fail for movie night and tell us they love us before bed. they’re _choosing_ to call us _mom_ and _dad_ and that doesn’t put any higher expectation on us. they just want us to keep doing what we’re doing. besides, they’re pretty fuckin’ amazing, so we’ve got to be on the right track.”

he laughs, the tension leaving his body as he brings his hands up to cup her cheeks. “they are pretty fuckin’ amazing, aren’t they?” she nods, just as he places a kiss on her lips and then brings her arms up to clasp them around his neck, squeezing her tightly into a hug. “how did he call you _mom_?”

she giggles. “we were royally fucking up that pasta dish earlier and he just said, _i don’t think we’re doing it right, mom._ ”

they’re still in the kitchen laughing about it when gar shows up, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, telling them rachel woke him up and he hasn’t been able to relax since. dick offers for him to try to sleep with them and gar nods happily, already making his way to their room without waiting to see if they’re following.

**\---**

it takes a little while longer, but eventually, _mom_ and _dad_ just start to slip out and no one makes a big deal out of it, so it continues. dick gets an airy feeling in his chest everytime it happens and he can never stop himself from giving them some form of affection afterwards, because he just loves these kids so damn much.

donna comes to visit in the may, mostly just because she’s bored and is tired of only chatting to rachel and gar over the phone every week, so she shows up one day to pick them up at school, but all three forget to tell dick and kory, so there’s a whole twenty minutes where they’re ready to burn down the entire city to find them. both kids give them extra tight hugs when they return home and donna sends them a face that screams _yikes_ , but they brought dinner home so they all sit on the sofa and chat until rachel bores gar to sleep with a pride and prejudice speech and dick sends rachel to bed so that she can get up early to do the homework she was supposed to do tonight.

kory’s got a night shift so it’s just him and donna on the couch with red wine until the early hours of the morning and there’s more than one moment when he catches her looking at him weirdly. when he finally questions her about it, she just sighs in content, sipping her wine and shaking her head at him as if he’s cute. “i’m just happy. it’s peaceful here. simple, i guess.” she pauses, tilting her head. “you know, all day those kids have been referring to you as _dad_.”

he grins, nodding. “yeah, that’s a new development.”

she laughs along, swishing the wine around in her glass. “So, are you going to make it official? I know you’re their legal guardians, but aren’t you technically listed as foster parents?”

he’d discussed adopting the kids with kory a lot. they would do it eventually, he knew. “I would, if it weren’t such a terrible process. we’d have to have social workers visit, it’d take a long time, we could be declined… we will one day.”

“okay, what about making it official with kory?” donna grins, cheekily. dick frowns, unsure of what she means. donna rolls her eyes, lifting her head from where it rests on her palm and points to her ring finger on her left hand.

“oh, god.” dick mumbles, only half-listening to donna’s spew about family and time and love. when he lies in bed with kory the next night, her chin resting on his chest and his hand gliding through her hair, he mentions it. “donna tried to get me to propose to you the other night.”

kory giggles, as if this is everyday kind of talk and looks up at him with gleaming eyes. “yeah? did it work?”

he thinks she’s joking, but he replies with “yeah, i think so.” anyways. her eyebrows knit together for a moment and then she grins, talking about living out her _say yes to the dress_ fantasy. “and spending eternity with me, but sure, the dress is important too.”

“chronological order, grayson. dress comes first, then eternity.”

**\---**

he would’ve been fine with a courthouse document and then a small party at their place afterwards but his wife is a _go big or go home_ type of woman, so they get married under a pretty arch at a lakeside venue with everyone there. rachel and gar look like fuckin’ angels in their maid of honour and best man outfits, even though rachel tries to trip him down the aisle and gar pinches her side so that she squirms. the ceremony itself is over and done with pretty quickly and then there’s a fifteen people reception inside the venue with an open bar and he has to make rachel promise she won’t hypnotize the bartender into giving them drinks. gar brings his almost-boyfriend (dick wishes he’d just ask him out already, but that’s none of his business) and dawn keeps rachel on the dancefloor all night, while he spends his time cuddling into kory and trying his hardest to get out of an emotional talk with bruce. (it doesn’t work. they both hug and he’s sure bruce teared up as soon as he did, but that’s a story for another time.)

the original plan was for donna to go home with the kids and for dick and kory to stay at a hotel, but as the night comes to a close, neither one can bring themselves to do it. dick’s not sure when he became the type of dad who’d rather be with his kids than do anything else, but he supposes he’s not sure when he became a dad in the first place, anyways. his brain says it was when he’d said _enough is enough_ and moved them all into a family home in gotham and started seeing his adoptive father weekly for dinner and spent saturdays drinking lemonade with the neighbours, but his heart says it was the moment he saw rachel in the basement of chief’s house, surrounded by clouds of black smoke and promised her he was there to stay, and when he got her to the car, he heard a robotman tell gar to go with them and dick surprisingly just thought, _yeah. why not?_

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you liked it :)


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